what an utter humiliation for a completely useless Director of Childrens Services. from Day 1 he was out of his depth and never understood the complexities of a city like Birmingham.

once again we have a person who comes in and has to prove himself by radically restructuring things, only months after Brazil did the same. Could we be told how much Duxbury spent on his grand plans and his appointment of advisors – Paul Snook, Christina Banim, Terry Hawkins – as consultants, who all came from his previous team in Lincolnshire (and have gone too).

and its an interesting link with the independent Trust who are taking over Doncaster. and who was the recently appojnted Director there? Eleanor Brazil

how do these people move from one job to another so easily?

This is a loss to the city children and workforce and the blame lies with the political leadership who clearly cannot deal with competent directors. They lack vision and gusto and Brigid jones should resign as she is not able to do the job. Constituents will protest at her failure and scapegoating of a reputable director. She is out of her depth

Paul,

Amidst the criticism I noted this paragraph: The stark truth, as monthly progress reports show, is that co-operation between the public agencies is little better and there are particular concerns about the failure of police to attend case conferences. Crucially, social workers still cannot access IT systems of GPs, hospitals and the police, making it impossible for professionals to communicate in ‘real time’, which leads to delays in assessing child protection cases.

Why do social workers need to access the IT systems of doctors, hospitals and the police? I doubt that BCC. let alone social workers, would reciprocate. Nor would I want the police to access medical records.

What social workers need is access to the correct person dealing with an individual, their email address and phone number.

Rightly the WMPCC should be asking why the long established network of child / family protection units are not helping social services, let alone being absent from case conferences. Conferences that can be very time-consuming. I expect neither side has moved into the modern telecommunications age – video conferencing comes to mind.

So, another highly paid and expensive council appointee/employee flees the sinking ship. And the citizens of Birmingham absolutely none the wiser as to why – so much for transparency and honesty! Is this incompetence? Is it a mis-fit – a square peg and a huge round hole? Is it lack of sufficient and meaningful support from the council? Is it, in the final analysis, an impossible task and better left to Genghis Gove anyway?

We, the citizens, not merely deserve better from the council leadership (is that a contradiction in terms?), but we are totally entitled to better.